Trivia / Wild Things

• Billing Displacement: Despite prominent billing, Bill Murray only gets about twenty minutes of screentime.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Bulgaria: Antics
  • Brazil: Wild Girls
  • Canada: Streetwalkers
  • China: Play Hard
  • Czech Republic: Dangerous Games
  • Croatia: Wild Game
  • Hungary: Wild Desires
  • Italy: Sex Crimes
  • Poland: Wild Yearnings (Dzikie Żądze)
  • Portugal: Wild Connections
  • Serbia: Wild Passions
  • Slovenia: Wild Passion
• Contractual Purity:
  • Neve Campbell never appears naked in any sex scenes (even in the Unrated version) because she has a no-nudity clause written into her contract. The most far her character gets is Toplessness from the Back, and even that appears to be from a body double.
  • In an interview with Maxim magazine, Kevin Bacon noted that he has a no-nudity clause in his contract, and that he was a producer of the movie, so technically he could have sued himself.
• Dawson Casting: Denise Richards was 27, Neve Campbell 25, both playing 18-year-old high school girls. Matt Dillon was only 7 years older than Richards despite playing her teacher.
• Deleted Scene: Several scenes were not included in the film, including one that expands on Suzie's motives for the Gambit Pileup scheme: She's actually an unacknowledged heir to the Van Ryan estate. Sandra Van Ryan's late father was an adulterous philanderer with a love of hookers, meaning Suzie is Sandra's half-sister. Of course, this makes her seducing Sandra's daughter Kelly a lot more squicky in hindsight as well, which is probably why it ended up being cut.
• Gay Panic: The film's lesbian relationship is a major part of the story and its marketing, but a plot line that revealed a sexual relationship between Sam and Ray was written out of the script. In the original script, the ending shower scene was supposed to feature a kiss between the two men, which would mirror Suzie and Kelly’s relationship, but the film's financiers vetoed it. This gives more subtext to the scene where Sam publicly calls Ray a “cocksucker”, which angers him greatly.
• Life Imitates Art: Denise Richards would later appear in an iteration of The Real Housewives, where she got involved in a scandal where in one episode it was claimed that she had slept with one of the housewives. She denied the accusations, but admitted to being "bi-curious". Many reports couldn't help but recall her role in this film in light of this.
• Parody Retcon: The movie is generally seen as a Guilty Pleasure if nothing else, but the sheer volume of unintentional hilarity has lead some to hypothesize that it may have been a Stealth Parody of erotic thrillers all along. It was directed by an indie filmmaker with a history of making clever movies, and it gives a juicy (and funny) supporting role to a well-known comedian (Bill Murray), so the hypothesis isn't unreasonable.
• Produced by Cast Member: This was Kevin Bacon's first producer credit.
• What Could Have Been:
  • This version of the script provides some additional backstory for many of the characters, in particular giving both Sam and Kelly more reason to get involved in the conspiracy. Unfortunately, this backstory was cut from the final version of the film.
  • Robert Downey Jr. was originally cast as Sam Lombardo, but dropped out.
  • Tara Reid auditioned for Kelly Van Ryan.
  • In the original draft of the screenplay, the object Kelly is holding underneath the towel, in the threesome scene, wasn't a bottle of champagne, as seen in the film, but a novelty penis.
  • In the three-way scene in the original version of the screenplay, when Suzie removes her tank-top, she has a couple of tattoos and a pierced nipple.
  • The original screenplay featured a gay scene between Duquette and Sam near the end of the film, in which the men kiss in the shower. It was meant to show that, like Suzie and Kelly, the two had a homosexual relationship that allowed Lombardo to prey on Duquette in order to manipulate him and ultimately con him out of the money.
• Working Title: Sex Crimes, which was its actual title in multiple countries. This makes the intro of the movie also a Title Drop when Sam gives a lecture on the topic.

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